Often characters who really shouldn't have any motives to keep this information secret from the character do this. It may be merely to pad out the season, or if the person is The Chooser of The One it may be a test to see if the character is in fact worthy of the title of chosen one. Though they frequently claim that making the hero work through things by himself is a necessary learning experience.

Example:

open/close all folders

Anime & Manga

At no point in AIKI does Kunitoshi ever give a straightforward lesson on anything. The most he does is tell you when you've screwed up. On the other hand, should someone manage to get started on their own, he does give them legitimate advice on the next steps.

Bleach: Soken Ishida refuses to explain his son Ryuken'sRefusal of the Call to his grandson Uryu. Instead, he tells Uryu that he has to learn for himself the secret of what Ryuken wants to protect. Sadly, this approach didn't work out for the Ishidas, since Uryu has now joined up with the very people Ryuken was hoping to protect him from.

This is C.C.'s favourite trope in Code Geass, aside from being a Sugar and Ice Personality. She was in league with the Protagonist's parents, but switched sides after some soul-searching. Mostly, she's willing to help out a lot from behind the scenes, whilst leaving Lelouch to learn lessons on his own.

In Naruto Jiraiya tells this to Naruto when he is training him on how to use the Rasengan, that Naruto will have to work out how to pop the balloons and complete all 3 stages of mastering the jutsu by himself.

Notably, Naruto also improvises a way to do the first stage while circumventing the most difficult part which Jiraiya didn't expect at all.

Also, during a Cryptic Conversation over a game of shogi, Asuma asks Shikamaru what part of Konoha the King represents. Only with his last breath does he reveal the identity of the King: the new generation.

Kabuto revives some fairly powerful kages during the 4th shinobi world war, controlling their bodies but allowing them to speak normally to their opponents, who they would otherwise want to be allied with. One of them, the Second Mizukage, gets tired of explaining his techniques (or rather, tired of his opponents utterly failing to make effective use of the explanations), and eventually states that if they're not strong enough to figure it out on their own and seal him, they don't deserve to win.

In One Piece, Robin asks Rayleigh, first mate of the Roger Pirates, whether Roger found out what happened in the 100-Year Void, the truth detailed in the Rio Poneglyph she's been looking for most of her life. He advises her to continue her journey, suggesting that she might come to an entirely different conclusion than he did, saying that they, as mere pirates, could not hope to understand the true history as well as the scholars of Ohara did. He still offers to tell her if she wants to know, but she politely declines.

Despite the obvious worry of Princess Nine's lead about the truth of her late father cheating in a baseball game, none of the characters who admit to knowing will tell her. She is later inexplicably convinced by her own bizarre dream sequence.

Used effectively in a serious arc of Ranma 1/2: a new rival, Ryu Kumon, is using the devastating Yamasenken martial art invented by Genma, and is tearing up the place looking for its counterpart/complement, the Umisenken. However, Genma is so horrified that someone is using it, he utterly refuses to teach Ranma anything about either style. Only after Ranma is nearly killed and comes home a bruised, battered pulp, does Genma relent slightly: he will use the Umisenken style on Ranma, once, and it's up to Ranma to figure out the entire style from that ridiculously brief demonstration. Naturally, Ranma does.

Except he actually didn't. His mom found the scroll detailing it and cut it up to use as an envelope containing a message for Ranko. All without being aware that Ranma was Ranko and that Ranma needed to learn the Umisenken.

In Saiyuki, the main character, as a Sanzo priest, is supposed to give advice and provide an example of how to live your life. Sanzo rejects this as hypocritical and useless. He therefore takes a "figure it out yourself" stance on LIFE. The one time he does give a lecture on Buddhist ideology (his personal favorite, "if you meet the buddha, kill the buddha") it is a HUGE deal.

In Haruhi Suzumiya, both Asahina Mikuru and Nagato Yuki give Kyon very incomplete information about how to ... save the world from Haruhi. Kyon puts both clues together at nearly the last minute to do just so. Justified to some extent because both Asahina and Nagato are constrained by rules.

After the four retrieve the first piece of the Vasyn in With Strings Attached and the Fans “call” to congratulate them, George asks why his ring stuck, and Ringo asks whether he actually teleported or the Fans saved him. Jeft says ~THESE ARE NOT THINGS WE CAN TELL YOU. YOU MUST FIND OUT FOR YOURSELVES.~ To which George, reasonably enough, cries “Rubbish! How're we supposed to find this bloody thing for you if our magic goes haywire for no reason?” Shag is equally annoyed at Jeft for holding out on the four, and answers their questions for them. (At which Jeft sniffs, ~ARE WE QUITE FINISHED SPOILING MYSTERIES?~)

Immediately after they leave the four, Jeft gives Shag a series of good reasons why he didn't want to answer the questions. She grudgingly agrees that he was right and she was wrong.

His reasons are all garbage; he really did want to preserve the mysteries in the story, since it's all a game he cooked up.

Kyoko: Hmm, this is going to be a really challenging one, so I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to help you out this time.

Makoto: This time? When did you even help me out the first time?

Film

In Rise of the Guardians, this seems to be the case with the Man in the Moon, particularly in his "interactions" with Jack. Also, he seems to have a very hands-off relationship with the Guardians as a whole.

Literature

The cheela (neutron-star dwelling beings) of Dragon's Egg live much faster lives than humans, and advance at a much faster rate (it takes them roughly one day to advance from their equivalent of Sumeria to their equivalent of Rome). When a human spaceship shows up and even further boosts their rate of technological advancement (by essentially beaming Wikipedia at them), they feel the need to pay them back when they (again within a day or two) advance far past human technology. However, they can't just tell us everything; instead, everything they know is encrypted with keys that are based on the knowledge contained inside. So, for example, the unlock the section on faster-than-light travel, humans will need to find a pyramid on a body around Epsilon Eridani...which is about 10 light years away from the Sun. Their reasons aren't really explored, but they seem to feel that simply telling us will deprive us of the benefits of figuring it out ourselves.

Basically, the cheela asked themselves "What if we'd gotten the human encyclopedia all at once instead of at a slow (by our standards) trickle?" and decided that it would be a bad idea to dump all their knowledge on the humans at once.

In The Gods Themselves, the nature of Soft One maturation requires that the Rational work out the species' life cycle on his own. Simply telling him how it works prevents him from reaching the level of mental development needed to actually cause the final maturation.

Most of Harry Potter's interactions with Dumbledore revolve around measured dispensing and denying of plot critical information — all as a "learning experience".

In the sixth book, Dumbledore admits that this was a bad idea. But even then, he still doesn't tell Harry what a Horcrux is, even though he has excellent reasons to do so (Harry doesn't think finding out about them is that important; if he knew what they were, it might move up his priority list).

In the seventh book, he implies to Snape that he kept secrets from Harry so that Voldemort wouldn't know through their Psychic Link.

During theseventh book, while the Power Trio is on the road trying to figure out what they have to do, Hermione suggested this trope as a rationale for why they had to do something while Lampshade Hanging how little sense it makes. Later on, when Harry turned the same rationale on her for a different goal, she admitted that she didn't really believe it and was just trying to get her way in the first place. Of course, Harry turns out right anyway.

This is how Elodin teaches naming in The Kingkiller Chronicle. It basically consists of doing random things for stupid reasons, letting the students figure out how to name stuff.

In the second book of The Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Lisbeth tells only cryptic clues to Mikael while he is trying to investigate the murders she is accused of and clear her name.

Richard's companions in Neverwhere pointedly refuse to explain most of London Below, on the premise that it's dangerous to know too much. Richard nearly dies several times due to lack of forewarning, at which point his "friends" chide him for not knowing information they withheld.

L.E. Modesitt's Saga of Recluce series has a particularly ridiculous case of this. Order mages are usually "trained" by giving them a near-incomprehensible textbook and sending them off into danger. Why? Because, for no apparent reason, actually explaining things prevents mages from applying what they were told. Even though the explanations make perfect sense to the reader.

In The Thrawn Trilogy, the eponymous antagonist uses this after dropping a few oblique hints so a smuggler captain he wants to come to a particular conclusion doesn't get suspicious.

A version of this trope is brought up in Starfighters of Adumar, when Wedge Antilles does not want to kill the Proud Warrior Race guys he's having to fight, but can't tell them why because he's trying to sway their government, and outright stating that he finds their way of life repulsive won't win the New Republic any favors.

Everybody in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. If the good guys didn't universally have a habit of not sharing information with each other (along with othertragicflaws), the series really would have been a trilogy.

Of course, this is intentional, as one of the major themes of the series is the problems caused by poor communication and unwillingness to talk

The author also had a habit of using this line on readers who wanted to know what the hell was going on.

Angel: "You're Welcome". Cordelia wakes from her coma to help Angel and company rediscover their true calling:

Cordelia: You just forgot who you are. Angel: Remind me. Cordelia: Oh no, that's for you to figure out, bubba.

In an episode of the 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica when the character Six gets Baltar to tell Commander Adama he needs an atom bomb to find possible Cylons, and Six tells him, "figure out the rest yourself."

Of course, it was this very bomb that enabled the Cylons to find the humans once they had settled on New Caprica.

The Doctor from Doctor Who and Sailor Pluto from Sailor Moon both invoke the "changing the future" excuse.

It's also the case for several characters on Fringe, particularly the Observersnote although in their case it's sort of justified in that they exist outside time, although Sam Weiss gets a few good moments in seasons 2 and 3.

A complaint often leveled at the characters in Lost; they all really need to be more forthcoming with answers and persistent in the asking of questions.

Dimitria spent the first half of Power Rangers Turbo doing this (her species could only talk in questions, supposedly, though fellow "Inquirian" Visceron didn't have this problem), only to drop this practice when the four veteran Rangers- probably more experienced at this sort of thing than she was- were retired and replaced, at which point she got a lot more direct.

Lampshaded in an early episode of Red Dwarf, with the 'Holly Hop Drive'

Lister: It's just a box, with "STOP" and "START" on it! Holly: It's fairly straightforward. If you want to start it you press "START", and you can work out the rest of the controls for yourself.

Dr. Cox has this attitude very often with all of his interns/residents on Scrubs, although it is possible that this is because, as doctors, they need to be able to perform procedures/diagnoses in order to become effective medical staff. Or, possibly, because he's a jerk.

It's a recurring part of the Ancients' schtick in Stargate SG-1, and a lot of what makes the Tollans so annoying.

Nicely explained concerning the issue of ascension. The Ancients believe people should learn how to do it themselves (after all, they did), while the Ori promise to ascend followers for them (which is actually a lie, but no one knew it at the time). While Daniel is usually frustrated by the Ancients and their lack of helpfulness, he once spoke in their defence to stop people from following the Ori:

Daniel: You're right. Maybe...hoarding knowledge is wrong. Or maybe it's not. Maybe learning something for yourself is part of the journey to enlightenment.

A time traveler in an episode pulls this on Picard, saying how happy he is to be visiting the Enterprise. Picard, meanwhile, has a difficult decision to make and wants the time traveler to tell him how the decision turns out (the fate of a whole planet was at stake). The time traveler, naturally, refuses. Picard does make the right choice and saves everybody, but in an interesting subversion it turns out that the time traveler is bluffing about knowing how things come out: he was actually from the past and had stolen the time machine.

In the Series Finale "All Good Things...", Picard asks Q what he's really saying about humanity. Q begins to whisper something in his ear, then changes his mind, smiling broadly, bidding farewell, "In any case, I'll be watching. And if you're very lucky, I'll drop by to say hello from time to time. See you... out there!"

In the Supernatural episode "Meet the New Boss", the Winchesters try to bind the Grim Reaper to force him to dispatch a rogue angel who achieved godhood. They eventually fail, but Death doesn't immediately vaporize them. Instead he goes out of his way to create another eclipse so that the Winchesters can reverse the ritual that started all this mess and tells them to compel the angel to do it, but emphasizes that it's not a Cosmic Entity's job to save one tiny planet every time it's on the edge of disaster.

Dean: "Compel"? Death:Figure it out.

Video Games

In the case of the Ace Attorney series, it's obvious what the real reason is that Phoenix Wright (and Apollo) have to figure everything out for themselves. After all, it wouldn't be much of a game if they kept telling you how to solve the problems. In-universe, however, it's kind of strange how everyone, including his mentor Mia, refuses to give any advice at trials more helpful than sometimes-vague hints. Apparently, Phoenix's growth as a lawyer is more important than making sure his innocent client doesn't get convicted of murder, even if that client is Mia's little sister.

Phoenix in fact questions Mia's motive for being so secretive about the outcome on one occasion. In the second case of Justice For All, she tells him that if he can't answer her questions, he won't stand a chance against Franziska in court.

Ema Skye uses the phrase directly in the 4th game, regarding Phoenix's loss of his badge.

Dangan Ronpa: Kirigiri and Togami both pull this regularly. Kirigiri justifies it with the idea that Naegi needs to learn how to solve cases on his own in case anything happens to her, while also wanting to avoid her preconceived notions influencing the investigation. Perhaps more pragmatically, she also has to worry about giving out more than anyone needs to know on the off-chance that one of the other students might be the Big Bad (which turns out to be the case, just not in the way she thought). Togami, meanwhile... he's just a Jerkass who wants to flaunt his intellect in a show of power, since to him the game is a life-or-death struggle that he intends to win. In the second case he actively hinders the investigation in order to smoke out people smart enough to be a threat to him.

Dragon Age: Origins. If Loghain is a party member, and you decide not to take him with you to defeat the Archdemon, he puzzles why you spared his life if you had no intention of forcing him to kill the archdemon as an alternative to self-sacrifice, one of your answers is that someday he'll realize why. If you choose the Heroic Sacrifice, it's doubly poignant.

Played straight in the first Kingdom Hearts though, when Sora asks Hercules what it takes to be a true hero.

In Mother 3, this is more-or-less what Wess tells Duster when sending him to get the Egg of Light. Naturally, being told only to get a shiny thing in the nearby ancient castle, with no more details than that, backfires, but Wess simply blames Duster for the mistake.

An old game on the Apple II called Nightmare #6 started off with the text: "The object of the game is to figure out the object of the game."

The entirety of Riven is an instance of Figure It Out Yourself. Atrus is too busy to explain the situation before sending you off, so he gives you a wondrously cryptic journal, assuring you that "most of what you'll need to know is in there". He does mention that he can't supply you with an escape hatch, "for reasons you'll discover". And he tells you to signal him when you've accomplished your mission, but doesn't tell you how ...

The Star Tablet keepers of the Suikoden series tend to do this a lot, much to said Stars' annoyance.

Most notably, Zerase and her ExpyZenoa, who practically brag about their knowledge and ridicule you for asking questions of them.

Somewhat amusingly, when Yuan from Tales of Symphonia says this to the party, it's mostly just that he's too impatient to bother explaining all the details.

This is integral to Jonathan Blow's approach to designing games. He says he enjoys the "aha!" moment when he finally works out how to progress in a game, and wants people who play his games to experience that pleasure for themselves, refusing to release walkthroughs or help guides for that reason. He's also said that this is why he doesn't enjoy playing most games, because they tell him exactly how to play.

In Homestuck, Karkat is extremely reluctant to explain anything of use to John, even though it would be immensely helpful. This is because he's organising the conversations in a reverse temporal fashion (his first talk with John is John's last, and vice versa). Thus, he's already explained those facts and doesn't want to repeat himself every time, which means John either figures it out himself, gets the information from another source (which pisses Karkat off) or waits until Karkat is finally good and ready to explain. When Karkat later trolls Jade, she enforces a password system for the explicit purpose of not letting him do this.

Part of Karkat's aggravation stems from the fact that John is, essentially, doing the very same thing to him.

A few of the Nukees comics that focus on the undergrads talk about this tendency in undergrad textbooks. "The book says, 'the reader can show how X becomes Y squared. I'm the reader! I can't show! The back of my ass! That's what I can show!"

Justified in Thunderstruck, with the Shackled Man. Basically, he can see all possible futures except events directly involving him. So if he tells anyone what he sees, and they act on it, he can't see what happens to them after that.

Western Animation

In Ben 10: Secret Of The Omnitrix, this is implied uttered by the creator of the Omnitrix at the very end of the Made-for-TV Movie. Due to the very little learning experience Ben expresses, it's pretty much used to maintain the status quo. Of course, Azmuth doesn't tell him anything, anyway.

Mr. E from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is this one. He hangs a lampshade in one episode when he wants to give a Riddle to Mystery Inc, but Shaggy demands a straight answer.

Mr. E: Where's the fun in that?

Real Life

The ancient philosopher Socrates believed in using a complex questioning method to engage with his opponents, instead of simply arguing for the ideas that he had in mind; this makes this Older Than Feudalism. This method of debate gets so mind-blowingly annoying that it may have had more than a little to do with why Socrates was eventually sentenced to death by the people of Athens.

It can help people understand a concept more than if they were just told about it. By asking them questions, they can theorize and you can find out what they already know and what they need to be taught. It's also effectively politically in that, also if done well, the person you're doing this to will think they came up with your idea. And people will always accept things more easily if it's "their" idea.

Part of the reason he was executed was because he annoyed (or rather, pissed off) the wrong people with his questions. The tall and mighty didn't like being made fools of back then.

It probably didn't help Socrates that (at least as portrayed by Plato) he rarely paid more than lip service to his own favored method of discourse. After an initial series of exchanges that show how hopelessly confused his opponent is regarding the matter at interest, the core questions from Socrates invariably go like: "And wouldn't you agree that such and such, and also that this and that, so because of fee fie foe it must be true that blah de blah?" The opponent is then reduced to meekly agreeing. Figure it out yourself, indeed.

During his lifetime Socrates objected to the way Plato represented him. Plato basically treated Socrates as a mouthpiece for his ideas.

In the card game Mao, it is against the rules to tell people about the rules. That is the one of the only rules that the people trying to get you to learn the game can tell you. You have to figure out everything else from how the people who know how to play are playing. Oh, and a new rule is added by the winner of each round.

Interestingly this game is often described as a good glimpse into what trying to learn etiquette feels like for autistic people.

Many parents take this approach to child rearing, in hope that they'll end up with smart and independent kids.

Likewise with teachers sometimes. They'll only give enough of the basics with a few examples. The rest is up to the student to understand and get a better appreciation for what they've learned, rather than just regurgitating the material.

Often invoked (many times as a Hand Wave) in technical lectures and discussions, especially in math and science: "The proof is left as an exercise for the reader." In general, the lower the quality of a textbook or the shorter a lecture is on time, the more frequently you can expect the sentence to occur.

It's sometimes more of a focus thing. As engineer, you don't really need the whole mathematical proof behind most things. You need to understand what you're doing and why and apply it to practical things like building bridges. As a doctor, there is knowledge needed about what the body is made of, but you don't need all the exact chemical reactions. A race car driver doesn't need to know all the formulae and mathematical models that make his car go 3 milliseconds faster than his opponents' cars. There is a vast sea of knowledge and it's become impossible for one person to know it all.

A quote from physicist Richard Feynman: "What I cannot create, I do not understand".

Similar to the matrix example above, it's debated whether or not qualia can be accurately defined.

Obviously it can be sufficiently defined since they wouldn't be able to talk about it otherwise.

There are things in life that can only be learned/believed through experience, some because it doesn't quite make sense logically at the time ("Careful - the [unchanged-looking] stove is hot now."), and some because it's something no one really knows how to explain, and you can't really comprehend unless you've learned it by experience. ("Love and hate are not opposites.")

This is actually a large part of constructivism, a teaching philosophy that is becoming more common in today's schools and being driven into education major's heads by their instructors. Children are not simply told "This is how you solve a problem." Instead, they are guided through the process with questions and prompts from the teacher so that they can discover the answers themselves.

Doubly so in language learning, where the "Translation Method" (ie. using known language A to explain a word/phrase in unknown language B) can interfere with the mental modelling that would otherwise develop from struggling through language B by itself.

Zen Buddhism thrives on this, as the whole point of enlightenment is that it's something you have to pursue and figure out yourself. Therefore asking a master to explain something is more likely to get you a Koan or a seemingly unrelated demonstration than anything a layperson might consider useful.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy